The Dog Who Saved Christmas
2009 television film directed by Michael Feifer
The Dog Who Saved Christmas is a 2009 American made-for-television Christmas comedy film starring Dean Cain, Gary Valentine and the voice of Mario Lopez. It was written by childhood friends Michael Ciminera and Richard Gnolfo. It premiered on ABC Family on November 29, 2009, during their Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas programming block. It was ranked as the number one cable program during its timeslot, and the number one cable film in the winter of the 2009 with 4.0 million viewers.
Plot
Zeus, a Labrador Retriever and a former police dog, has lost his bark after his barking ended up blowing off a five-year investigation and his partner can't shoot straight again and ends up at the pound. He is adopted by George Bannister as both an early Christmas present and as a good guard dog for the house, but the mom is hesitant and didn't want a dog. The dog is left home alone on Christmas Eve when the family head off to visit Grandma's house. A pair of burglars, Ted Stein and Stewey McMann break into the family home, and it is up to Zeus to save Christmas for his new family by setting up booby traps to stop them. Zeus soon gets caught by the burglars and they muzzle him and continue to rob the house. Zeus escapes while Ted and Stewey continue to rob the house.
“The Dog Who Saved Christmas” enters the record as 2009 television film directed by Michael Feifer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Saved, Christmas and television can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3226941. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Dog Who Saved Christmas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.